Lauding him for his pragmatism, the Seattle Times editorial board has endorsed Republican Drew Stokesbary for the open state House seat in the 31st Legislative District. Which I suppose is to be expected, because Stokesbary is a Republican, whereas his main Democratic opponent is a local teachers union president. And if there’s anything the Blethenites hate more than a teacher or a unionist, it’s a teachers unionist.

But what the editors ignore, is that in addition to being a tax averse Republican, Stokesbary is also a bigot, a racist, a sycophant, and a lifelong asshole with absolutely no respect for our state’s voter-approved campaign finance and disclosure laws. This is a guy renowned for heckling professional golfer Curtis Strange, and for telling his immigrant classmates to go back where they came from. This is the kinda guy who complains about a teacher forcing him to read a book by a black author.

In other words, Stokesbary is an asshole.

And it’s not like he’s an especially qualified asshole, either. The Municipal League rated Stokesbary merely “adequate,” while his two opponents received a rating of “good.” And yet the editors claim that such adequate assholery is “crucial if deals are to be struck and gridlock avoided.” Oh please.

Heckling? He was soliciting soft money contributions (illegal) and was at the same time an employee of the BIAW (and he was soliciting them). Unethical, and he a sicko racist – but the Times loves him because he is anti-teachers and anti-union.

Goldy must be able to do better than this. I have no fucking interest in Stokesberry but Goldy’s invective seems overblown.

For example, calling Stokesberry a racist for finding Gordon Parks’ book less than awesome and mentioning that the book’s author was a black man writing his biography, is more than a bit of an exaggeration. For the record, Parks was a MUCH better photographer than a writer. The book is hardly oin a league with The Lonely Man.

As for Goldy’s rant about Stokesberry not liking the AFT, the guy may be a GOP nutcase but he is hardly alone as finding fault with the WA state teachers unions. … remember we are the ONLY state not to meet federal requirements for school and teacher evaluations!

Now of course Goldy will scold me for being kindly t the GOP. That is (in the spirit of HA) horse pucky.

It is of benefit to them and to the public that laborers should unite in their common interest and for lawful purposes. They have labor to sell. If they stand together, they are often able, all of them, to command better prices for their labor than when dealing singly with rich employers, because the necessities of a single employee may compel him to accept any terms offered him. — William Howard Taft

“Workmen may combine lawfully for their own protec- tion and common benefit; for the advancement of their own interests, for the development of skill in their trade, or to pre- vent overcrowding therein, or to encourage those belonging to their trade to enter their guild; for the purpose of raising wages, or to secure a benefit which they can claim by law. The moment, however, that they proceed by threats, intimidation, violence, obstruction, or molestation, in order to secure their ends; or where their object be to impoverish third persons, or to extort money from their employers, or to ruin their business, or to encourage strikes or breaches of contract among others, or to restrict the freedom of others for the purpose of compelling employers to conform to their views, or to attempt to enforce rules upon those not members of their association, they render themselves liable to indictment.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that “under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government.”

“remember we are the ONLY state not to meet federal requirements for school and teacher evaluations!”

Not even remotely true: virtually every state receives a waiver from those pesky evaluations, but our waiver was yanked because we declined to use the results of high-stakes tests as the core component of teacher evaluation. In fact, student achievement IS a component in evaluation in Seattle in particular and in Washington in general, as our current Superintendent pointed out to Arne “I spent the absolute minimum time in a classroom because I know nothing about teaching” Duncan.

A large number of other states do exactly the same, or in fact do considerably less in the way of organized and objective evaluations, but oddly, they have not lost their waivers. The real reason, of course, is charter schools: if corporate hogs can’t get their snouts in the public-school trough, the state must be punished until they can – and while WA now does have a scheme that allows charter schools, there are as yet no charters in the state (although there are a few who claim to be pending; we’ll see).

The _Seattle Times_ also endorsed liar John Koster for the House in 2012. This endorsement happened before Koster, like a lot of other Repugnikans, said some stupid things about rape. I didn’t see an apology or un-endorsement from the _Times_ afterward.

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[…] as a defense against accusations of partisanship arising from, say, their endorsement of lifelong asshole Drew Stokesbary over his more qualified Democratic opponent in a swingish 31st Legislative […]

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